Much
remains to be done before Japan can claim to have revamped its cold war
posture on defense. The largest obstacle remains the self-imposed budget
cap that limits defense spending to 1 percent of GDP. It has been compounded
by Japan's fiscal difficulty, which has led to absolute decreases in defense
budgets since the beginning of the transformation. Moreover, collective
self-defense is still not yet part of legal practice, even if it has become
a de facto arrow in Japan's security quiver. Still, much more has changed
than most analysts imagined possible even five years ago, including the
elevation of the JDA to ministry status and legislation enabling the SDF
to use force to protect itself and, perhaps, its peacekeeping partners.
In the somewhat longer term, there will be the renaming of the SDF to include
the term 'military,'and either formal reinterpretation or outright revision
of the constitution to enable collective self-defense. The change in Japanese
security policymaking has been auspicious for the U.S.-Japan alliance,
for the development of a more muscular and autonomous Japan, and for regional
and global security. Japan may never again be as central to world affairs
as it was in the 1930S nor as marginal to world affairs as it was during
the cold war. Once revisionism has run its course, however, and once accommodations
are made in its economic diplomacy, Japan will have cleared for itself
a policy space in which it can be selectively pivotal in world affairs.
It will have created security options for itself.

Japanese discourse
is also, filled with contrasts between Washington's insistence on universal
values (democracy. nonproliferation, human rights) and its support for
dictators, its overthrow of foreign governments, its embrace of "friendly"
nuclear states, and its use of torture. When Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice criticized the idea of an East Asian community in March 2005 in Tokyo
by insisting that "instead of an exclusive club of powers, we stand for
a community open to all," it did not go unnoticed that the United States,
Mexico, and Canada operate a closed North American free trade area back
home. (International Herald Tribune, 16 December 2005.)

A century before
Washington first loomed as the deus ex machina in Japan's security drama,
vulnerability had already become deeply etched in Japanese debate. The
persistent sense of vulnerability is only one of the many elements of Japanese
strategic culture we explained
in P.1. A continental strategy or a maritime
one? Strength or wealth? Asia or Europe? A great power or a lesser power?
All of these questions have been fixtures of Japan's security discourse
since the creation of the Meiji state. In every decade since the late nineteenth
century Big Japanists have squared off against Small Japanists and autonomists
have denounced internationalists. The Yoshida-Kishi debate of the 1950S
echoed-and reversed the outcome of-the Shidehara-Ishibashi debate of the
1920s. It also anticipated the Abe-Ozawa clash of the mid-2000s. Sometimes
political battles solve problems and sometimes they create new ones, but
they also reinforce values and create norms linked to national identity.
The challenge for analysts of security policy is to understand how these
norms and identities matter-and when they change. And such collectively
held understandings of social life and national aspiration are not bequeathed
by history but forged and reforged in the crucible of political debate.
And we have seen how political entrepreneurs have used these understandings
to sell their own preferences. The preferences of particular entrepreneurs
have prevailed and became national-at least until world order shifts, challenging
the consensus and giving way to new debate. Indeed, the most striking continuity
in the history of modern Japanese security policy has been the consistency
with which discourse and consensus have alternated as new world orders
have come and gone. Values have endured sometimes as normative ends and
sometimes as political utilities, each connected to a range of policy options
in different global and regional contexts.

Two in particular-autonomy
and prestige-have been ubiquitous. Each one, sometimes invoked in efforts
to make Japan rich and at other times in efforts to make Japan strong,
has been reinforced in multiple contexts. Sometimes they frame the essential
elements of what Japan's grand strategy ought to be. Kanehara Nobukatsu,
the political minister at the Japanese embassy in Washington, explained
in 2006 that Japan must remake its strategy from one characterized by passive
pacifism (ukemi no heiwashugi) to one of active pacifism. Japan, he insists,
must transform itself from an economic superpower to a political superpower
in order to gain the respect (sonkei) of the rest of the world, and it
must do so on its own terms and at its own pace (jibun de kangaete, jibun
de ugoku). Others echo this position in calls for Japan to be a responsible
nation rather than merely a ‘normal’ one. Japan has transformed itself
from a peace-loving into a "peace-supporting" state, but now it must become
a ‘peacemaking’ one if it is to realize its proper place in world affairs.
Others argue that Japan should support the United States but also should
make independent decisions and display its own style of leadership. In
his inaugural policy address to the Diet in September 2006, Abe Shinzo
argued that Japan must be ‘trusted, respected, and loved in the world.’
Because these values are ubiquitous, their proponents are preaching to
the choir. Prestige-comprising strength and wealth-has long been essential
to security planners. Consider how the loss of prestige, measured through
the humiliation of checkbook diplomacy, has been used to frame Japan's
disappointing response to the Gulf War and to justify subsequent prodigious
efforts to enhance Japan's global peacekeeping role in Iraq. Likewise,
as the terrr, "sympathy budget" (omoiyari yosan) suggests, prestige has
been invoked to justify both increases in and reduction of host nation
support for U.S. forces stationed in Japan. Prestige has also been used
to reinterpret restrictions on the use of force so that Japanese forces
do not have to be protected by foreign troops when they are on peacekeeping
missions abroad. According to Prime Minister Abe, equality will be achieved
by the exercise of collective self-defense.

Autonomy looms
just as large and is just as uncontested. As we have seen, businessmen,
politicians, and the media refer routinely to the strategic importance
of rising sun (hinomaru) projects-liquid crystal display factories, jet
fighters, satellite imagery, and oil exploration are all valued more highly
to the extent they can reduce foreign dependence. The most compelling argument
for revision of the constitution-a matter that never had as much traction
as it has in the mid-2000s-is the chance for Japan to move beyond what
the United States imposed after 1945. An unnamed GSDF officer expressed
the concerns of many when he argued that "if we simply get onto the rails
laid by the U.S. military, we will merely be their subcontractor." The
strategic dangers involved are explored in a 2004 report of the Japan Forum
on International Relations, which concludes that "Japan should from this
moment onward have its own security policy as an independent nation. Its
president insists that Japan needs to navigate between" declining American
power and growing Chinese strength [to avoid] subservience [to either]."
(Asahi Shimbun, 19 February 2006.)

Indeed, the
return of full sovereignty looms over all discussions of u.s. bases in
Japan, even if open bilateral discussion of the need for a new status of
forces agreement-and for a new, more equitable security treaty-are still
avoided. The center-left Asahi Shimbun editorializes that Japan needs to
free itself from "excessive dependence" on the United States if it is to
repair relationships with the rest of Asia, and the influential center-right
monthly Bungei Shunju strikes exactly the same chord by insisting that
"Japan needs to plan for its own defense [because] it may no longer make
sense to follow the teacher's instructions." (Asahi Shimbun, 1 January
2006.)

Whether Japan
was governed by oligarchs or by democrats, its strategists weighed their
options with reference to autonomy and prestige. Both continue to be legitimate
values available to leaders with widely divergent preferences. As a result,
analyses of Japanese security policy must incorporate. Values matter, but
they do not determine policies. They inform policies through a political
process in which majorities shift and ruling coalitions have to be reconstructed
in often fickle contexts. Thus, even when Japan's leaders were at their
most reckless, the process by which they deployed these values in making
strategic choices was rational. Even their greatest security miscalculations
were filtered through, rather than bequeathed by, the legitimating ideals
of Japan's strategic culture outlined inp.1, especially the ubiquitous
sense of vulnerability and propensity to hedge. In short Japan's leaders,
whether mainstream or antimainstream, have been persistent rather than
"reluctant" realists.Insufficient attention to agency, unwarranted assumptions
about the consensual nature of Japanese politics, and the underappreciation
of the political process have resulted in observers missing some continuities
in strategic culture. For example, by the 1990S many analysts were impressed
with the persistence of pacifism in Japan's postwar security strategy.
On this account, Japanese attitudes toward the use of force shifted after
the devastation of the Pacific War and became institutionalized as the
norm guiding strategic choice. In fact, however, pacifists assumed an important
role in postwar Japan's security policy discourse, but they never dominated
it. To the contrary, the pacifists were indulged. They were used by mainstream
conservatives to consolidate the idea that prosperity was more important
than strength. But whereas the pacifists sought to use prosperity to achieve
autonomy, the calculating (and governing) mercantile realists of the Yoshida
school used it to achieve prestige. This is why cheap-riding realism rather
than pacifist idealism dominated Japanese grand strategy during the cold
war.

The Yoshida
Doctrine, Japan's postwar national security strategy, has been challenged
by the confluence of fundamental shifts in world order and the emergence
of a new conservative mainstream. Once again, domestic and international
politics were rattling against one another. As a result, Japan finds itself
in a historically familiar interregnum between broad consensuses on national
strategy. We can be confident that enduring values will continue to be
embedded in the political debate, just as we can be confident that a new
consensus will emerge that fits Japanese strategy to the new regional and
global context. We should not be surprised that this process will generate
new security options for Japan-or that these options will have been strategically
constructed. Let us turn to the context and the choices as we try to imagine
the contours of Japan's emerging security consensus.

Rather than
the prospect of Russian-speaking foreign troops landing on the archipelago,
Japan now for example, faces Chinese submarines. So although U.S. bases
in Japan have been identified as strategic hubs rather than tactical lily
pads, it is not at all clear that this logic will prevail. As the bases
become less significant, the United States is likely to ask Japan to add
value in different ways-ways in which it may be loathe to contribute. Once
this split becomes clear, the United States will begin to recalculate its
guarantee of Japan's defense, which will force Japan to reconsider whether
to pursue a security policy premised on U.S. protection.It ought to concern
Japanese strategists that less than half the U.S. elites surveyed by the
Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2005 named Japan as America's most
important partner in Asia. (Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 26 August 2005. )

More disconcerting
than the absolute level (48%) was the fact that the number of respondents
who identified Japan has dropped 17 points in the same year that the number
who identified China rose by 14 points to 38%.) Nor should they ignore
the 2004 survey in which 40 percent of U.s. elites expressed opposition
to the long-term stationing of U.S. forces in Japan. (Asahi Shimbun, 30
September 2004.)

Some in the
Pentagon also seem to be responding to the suggestion that alliances, too,
may have seen their day. Flexible coalitions of the willing loosely integrated
networks of overlapping partnerships-may yet prove more effective than
top-heavy and diplomatically expensive formal alliances. This sort of open
security architecture, in which webs replace hubs and spokes, threatens
to raise the costs Japan bears for the provision of its own security. Limited
abandonment also promises to reduce the chance of entanglement for both
sides. For the United States, it reduces (albeit slightly) the risk that
it might be dragged into a dispute between Japan and China over territory
or seabed resources. For Japan, it increases the legitimacy of opting out
of U.S. missions that it deems are not in its national- interest. The United
States and Japan may remain tied diplomatically, economically, ideologically,
as well as by many common strategic interests, but the formal alliance
could become less constricting. Setting aside the jingoism and hype, all
we can say with certainty about the future of the alliance is that it will
be more fluid over the next two decades than at any time in its existence,
and that its future will continue to be guided by strategic choices made
in Tokyo as well as in Washington. Given these changes in the strategic
context and the challenge they represent for Japan, what should we expect
Japan to do? Japan has four nominal choices consistent with its enduring
values. It can achieve prestige by increasing national strength. This,
of course, is the path Japan is already pressure for the elimination of
U.S. bases in Japan and will enhance the prospect of abandonment by Washington.
It will also accelerate the security dilemma already under way in Northeast
Asia.

Another choice,
the one preferred by the middle power internationalists, is to achieve
prestige by increasing prosperity and reducing Japan's exposure in world
politics. This requires turning back the clock and reversing some of the
more audacious assaults on the Yoshida Doctrine. Japan would once again
eschew the military shield in favor of the mercantile sword. It would bulk
up Japan's considerable soft power in a concerted effort to knit East Asia
together without generating new threats or becoming vulnerable. The Asianists
in this group would aggressively embrace regional economic institutions
to reduce Japan's reliance on the U.S. market. They would not abrogate
the military alliance, but they would resist U.S. exhortations for Japan
to expand its roles and missions. The mercantile realists in this group
would support the establishment of more open regional economic institutions
as a means to reduce the likelihood of abandonment by the United States,
and they would seek to maintain America's protective embrace as cheaply
and for as long as possible.The final, least likely, choice is to achieve
autonomy through prosperity. This is the choice of the pacifists, many
of whom today are active in civil society through NGOs that are not affiliated
with traditional political parties. Like the mercantile realists, they
would reduce Japan's military posture-possibly even eliminate it. But unlike
the mercantile realists, they reject the alliance as dangerously entangling.
They would eschew hard power for soft power and campaign to establish Northeast
Asia as a nuclear-free zone, ex-'pand the defensive defense’ concept
to the region as a whole, negotiate a region-wide missile control regime,
and rely on the ASEAN Regional Forum for security. (These plans are laid
out by one such group, Peace Depot, at http://www.peacedepot.org/e-news/frame.html.)

Their manifest
problem is that the Japanese public is unmoved by these prescriptions.
Antiwar rallies no longer attract large numbers and political parties that
oppose a robust defense no longer attract many voters. Pacifist ideas about
prosperity and autonomy seem relics of an earlier, more idealistic time
when Japan could not imagine, much less openly plan for, military contingencies.Yet
each of these choices is consistent with Japan's national values and strategic
culture as they have developed during the past century and a half. It is
possible that one will prevail, but none alone seems fully plausible as
the basis for a post-Yoshida consensus. One reason is that the Yoshida
Doctrine has been institutionalized in ways that make sharp discontinuity
less likely than continued, incremental change. Budgeting may be the best
example. As we have seen, Japan's postwar defense posture was determined
by a fiscal logic as well as by a strategic one. Yoshida's cheap-riding
realism required low military budgets and sustained resistance to the demands
of both the United States and an ambitious domestic defense industry. Despite
decades of salami slicing that expanded roles and missions, cheap-riding
realism remains a stubborn fact of life. After 1976, when the first NDPO
was issued-and even after 1995, when the alliance was reaffirmed in the
second NDPO and Japan committed to a greater role-the numbers of Japanese
ground troops, surface ships, and fighters were all reduced. In 2004, defense
spending was 6 percent of the general account budget, lower than the 8.2
percent level of 1965. MOF budget officers refused JDA requests for manpower
increases and required each service branch to submit a list of "cold war-oriented"
equipment to be eliminated. (Nihon Keizai shimbun, 2 November 2004; Yomiuri
Shim bun, 1 November 2004.)

Likewise, the
2004 National Defense Program Guidelines (NDPG) calls for a 12 percent
reduction in MSDF ships and planes, even though the MSDF is now patrolling
six thousand nautical miles out and the government has committed to missile
defense and antipiracy roles. The decision to bulk up and further militarize
Japan's off-budget coast guard only partly reconciles the mismatch between
the government's stated goals and its willingness to pay for their realization.
Nor will a separate budget to subsidize the realignment with U.s. forces,
as preferred by the MOD, bring Japanese defense spending up to "normal"
levels, especially if, as expected, Japan continues to reduce host nation
support. "Deteriorating fiscal conditions" are repeatedly mentioned in
the 2004 NDPG, which insists that Japan can build a "state of the art"
military "without expanding its size," and that it has to do so "with the
limited resources that are available."( National Defense Program Guidelines
(provisional translation) 2004, 5-6.)

Future salami
slices may push Japan over the edge of its tacit 1 percent of GDP cap-which
was, after all, supposed to be temporary and Which has once been exceeded-but
changes to date have not done so. To the contrary, defense budgets have
not gone up or down by more than 0.5 percent since 1997, and they have
been effectively flat since 1994, actually declining in nominal and real
terms. Defense buildups that might otherwise have proceeded without restriction,
and that seemed to have the approval of the Cabinet Office, have been effectively
contained. In 2007, the defense budget was reduced for the fifth year in
a row. (Mainichi shimbun, 20 July 2006.)

Barring a dramatic
and unforeseen shift in the world order, Japan will continue to enjoy its
cheap ride, something even the revisionists have not seemed eager to change.
While these normal nationalists have been consolidating their power, there
are several additional reasons why we should not expect the preferences
of any single group to prevail for long. First, Japan is a robust democracy,
and democracies tend to self-correct for policy excesses. Although much
maligned by analysts and participants alike, the Japanese political process
has never been more transparent and has never engaged the public more fully
than it does today. In particular, there are two important criticisms of
the democratic process that no longer seem apt. The first is that politicians
have ceded civilian control of the military to bureaucrats with a resulting
lack of democratic accountability. Although Prime Minister Yoshida designed
the JOA to be dominated by bureaucrats from other ministries, politicians
never ceded their authority. Councilors (sanjikan) seconded from other
parts of Japan's elite civil service were always influential but never
fully autonomous. Well before it became a full-fledged ministry in 2007,
the MOD was a policy agency, having grown its own elite civil servants
under the control of the LOP. Likewise, when politicians needed a congenial
ruling from the Cabinet Legislation Bureau, they got one. When politicians
needed to circumvent CLB interpretations, they did so. As former JOA director
general Ishiba points out in his memoirs, civilian control works only when
politicians understand military issues. Today, elected representatives
understand strategic issues better than at any time since the 1950s. Japanese
voters, through their elected representatives, may not be more engaged
in the minutiae of policy than, say, U.S. voters, but they certainly are
no less so. They are not likely to reward their leaders for excessive tilts
in one direction or another for long. And, as we have repeatedly seen,
their leaders-even the revisionists in power today-have always been remarkably
pragmatic. The second criticism of Japanese democracy is that there has
been no alternation in power and that therefore the security policy process
has failed to express the preferences of large numbers of Japanese voters.
We have seen that this, too, is a mistaken view of Japan's highly contested
democratic polity. The internal dynamics of the LOP-pitting mainstream
pragmatists against revisionist conservatives since the early 1950s-never
abated. Instead, the former group reached out to find common cause with
the pacifists in the 1950s and 1960s, and pragmatists and revisionists
competed for (and alternated in) power along the way. After 2000, when
Koizumi Junichiro became prime minister-and after he was succeeded in 2006
by Abe Shinzo-it seemed that the revisionists had finally consolidated
power. And the transformations in Japanese security policy that they prosecuted
were accompanied by shifts in popular opinion on such issues as the legitimacy
of the SOF, its overseas deployment, and revision of the constitution itself.
Even at that point, however, the LOP secretary general, Abe's handpicked
aide-Nakagawa Hidenao-declared his intent to erase the strong conservative
image of the Abe administration and be "more considerate to those on the
left." (sankei shimbun, 9 November 2006.)

The LOP leadership
knows as well as anyone that no group has a lock on the Japanese electorate.
Democracy is functioning well in Japan. Indeed, this suggests a further
reason why we should not expect the security preferences of any single
faction to prevail for long. Specifically, the normal nation-alists and
the middle power internationalists-the two a market for goods and services
will be reflected in the extent to the China threat gives way to a China
opportunity. Although the n of those surveyed by the Yomiuri Shimbun in
December 2003 thou United States was Japan's most important political partner,
an equalr (53%) believed that China was Japan's most important economic
pal

Finally, any
overt sign of Japanese ambitions for great power and a full security autonomy
is bound to stimulate balancing beha Japan's neighbors and, undoubtedly,
opposition from the United States as well. Japan suffers from what Ohtomo
Takafumi has aptly identifiel "sheep in wolf's clothing" problem. As he
notes, it takes a very long time of good behavior to overcome the distrust
of other states, and Jal not gone nearly far enough to merit the trust
of its neighbors. It still has a bad reputation in East Asia. Although
the Chinese and the Korea reached agreement on the language of history
textbooks, Japan neighbors have found it impossible to agree on a common
narrative the Pacific War. Japan's unwillingness or inability to confront
its history undoubtedly the largest single constraint on its soft power.
These several elements in Japan's strategic context-institutional the dynamics
of democratic competition, pragmatism, concern al: future of U.S. power,
and shifting regional balances of power-con make Japan's strategic adjustment
seem over-determined. If not a path toward Japanese muscularity, then what?
The evidence here is one that positions Japan not too close too far from
the hegemonic-protector, that makes it stronger but not threatening, and
that provides new and comprehensive security options.

Hedging is a
fundamental principle of any realist grand strategy, especially for midsized
powers. As Ronald Reagan's famous dictum "trust bu indicates, ensuring
against risk is hardly unique to Japan. Given the ( geopolitical location
and late development, it is no surprise that has long been an arrow in
Tokyo's strategic quiver. Few prewar· were prepared to pursue either cooperation
with the West or autar exclusion of the other. In the postwar period, Japan's
first order ness was to consolidate its alliance with the United States,
and it was to make that relationship as unprovocative as possible to Soviet
Union. Despite explicit requirements to do so, for example, Tokyo its ban
on collective self-defense and refused to share information about Soviet
practice bombing runs on U.S. bases in Japan during the cold war. (Prime
Minister's Commission on Japan's Goals 2000, 2.)

Japan could
use regional and bilateral preferential trade agreements to hedge against
U.S. and European predation, as well as to hedge against the possibility
of Chinese economic dominance and to enhance its smooth integration. Elements
of this dual hedge were central features of the Yoshida Doctrine from the
very beginning. Japanese-Chinese trade never disappeared during the Korean
War, when U.S. forces were fighting Chinese troops on the peninsula and
stimulating the Japanese economy with procurements. Tokyo and Beijing even
signed a private trade agreement in 1952, immediately after the armistice.
As Akira Iriye notes: "China was an important market and Japanese leaders
had no intention of giving it up just because they placed their country
in the U.S. camp in the Cold War. Japan indulged China throughout the cold
war, seeking to integrate it as smoothly as possible into the world trading
system without alienating the United States. Tokyo provided considerable
development assistance, even though its own rules prohibited aid to states
that produce weapons of mass destruction. In fact, Japan was faster than
any other county to repair relations with China after the Tiananmen incident
in 1989. Within little more than three months, a group from Keidanren was
in Beijing exploring ways to enhance economic ties. By 200}, it has been
reported, the economic dimension of the China threat was no longer a struggle
between China and Japan for leadership of Asia, but one between the United
States and Europe on the one hand and Japan on the other over who gets
access to the China market. Even Abe Shinzo calls for a "separation of
politics and economics" (seikei bunri no gensoku) to stabilize Sino-Japanese
relations. A fully institutionalized East Asian community combined with
a globalized U.S.-Japan alliance-what the MOD's National Institute for
Defence Studies has called ‘strategic convergence’ -would constitute
a considerably more robust security arrangement for Japan than the Yoshida
Doctrine could provide. (National Institute for Defense Studies 2005, 8,
35-36. Yomiuri Shimbun, 19 April 2006.)

Japan could
help create prosperity in China while relying on the United States to help
check the Chinese military. It could build prosperity without undermining
security. It could have its pacifist cake and eat it too. But why would
the United States continue to guarantee Japanese security if it is kept
at arm's length from the economic dynamism of the region? The challenge
for Japanese diplomats and strategists is to make strategic convergence
acceptable to the United States and attractive to China. There are no guarantees,
and hedging is always fraught with danger. But the hope is that the United
States will respond positively as long as the new economic architecture
is built on a liberal vision. Universal principles of human rights and
democracy will have to be showcased, ‘Asian values’ suppressed. The
regional identity that such an arrangement would generate will have to
be flexible and accessible rather than rigid or exclusive.During Diet interpellations
in January 2006, for example, Prime Minister Koizumi affirmed pacifism
as "the basic philosophy of our constitution [that] we must firmly maintain
in the future as well.” (Mainichi shimbun, 25 January 2006.)

Meanwhile, when
he was deputy chief cabinet Secretary in 2003, Abe Shinzo insisted that
"while it is vital to maintain a relationship of trust with the United
States, maintaining trust and being at its beck and call are two different
things."If the alliance were more equal, Japan would be better positioned
to "speak out" more vigorously to the United States.( Shilkan Posuto, 25
April 2003, 44.) In fact, in early 2007 Prime Minister Abe visited
the major nations of the European community "to add a new diplomatic axis"
and to shift from [Japan's] U.S.-centered policies.” (Mainichi Shimbun,
3 January 2007, and Asahi Shimbun, 11 January 2007.)

Here we have
Japan's leading revisionist genuflecting toward pacifist values and his
successor genuflecting toward autonomy, evidence that the final shape of
Japan's new security consensus is still up for grabs. Meanwhile, even some
of the most enthusiastic supporters of the alliance insist that Japan must
leave room for independent action on matters of vital national interest,
such as access to Middle Eastern oi1. Not surprisingly, the Japanese government
has retained opt out clauses in its tilt toward globalizing the alliance.
Missions have been authorized through temporary special measures laws with
sunset clauses, its forces were dispatched to noncombat zones, and if Japan
does not deem there to be a sufficient situational need in a regional contingency,
then it can define this as outside the scope of the alliance guidelines
and exercise the option not to support the United States. Its willingness
to jointly develop and deploy missile defense and to move toward an integrated
command-and-control structure with U.S. forces make it clear that Japan
has lost some of its fear of entrapment. But it has not abandoned pragmatism
altogether. Its close hug of the United States is not debilitating but,
rather, is generating options for national security that may render Japan
stronger and more independent.These new options normally are couched in
terms of the additional muscle Japan must provide for the United States.
But there are many other ways to think about the future. If Tokyo is diplomatically
competent, its newly acquired strength and confidence could make it more
attractive to other potential security partners in the region, such as
India and the ASEAN states. Ishiba Shigeru has made this point by deftly
shifting the conventional argument for collective self-defense. In addition
to making Japan a more attractive partner for the United States, he insists,
collective self-defense will also enable Japan to assist ASEAN states if
they are threatened by China. First, of course, Tokyo will need to reassure
its neighbors and avoid isolation, which is why a continued tether to the
United States makes sense. Some have even suggested that by enhancing its
role in the alliance, Japan could become the cork in the American bottle.These
shifts await a skilled consensus builder, someone who will see new possibilities
for Japanese security and can soften the harder edges of the contemporary
discourse by recombining values and options. Such leaders reside in each
corner of Japan's strategic discourse. On becoming head of the Democratic
Party of Japan in early 2006, Ozawa Ichiro, the godfather of normal nationalism,
lost no time in criticizing Prime Minister Koizumi for visiting Yasukuni
Shrine and for tilting too far in favor of the United States. Sounding
like Goldilocks herself trying to get things just right, Ozawa insisted
that Japan needs to mend its relationships with Asia and that it must distance
itself from the "hegemonic tendencies" of both China and the United States.
(Asahi Shimbun, 11 April 2006; Mainichi Shimbun, 15 April 2006; Nihon Keizai
Shimbun,s June 2006; Mainichi Shimbun, 13 July 2006.)

Abe, for his
part, could begin to deemphasize Japan's military power and stress Japan's
soft power advantages over China, including its democratic political system
and its protection of human rights and political liberty. And, indeed,
in the same week he visited Europe to stake out his independence from the
United States, he joined Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and ROK president Roh
Moo-Hyun for the first trilateral "Plus-3" summit in two years. Even neo-autonomists
such as Nakanishi Terumasa have voiced limited support for the U.s.-Japan
alliance, and Terashima Jitsuro has written about "how to be pro-American
and part of Asia at the same time.” Mercantile realists who already argue
for improved ties with China would have to accede to the idea that a stronger
Japan is here to stay. But, if the 2001 conversion of their mentor, Miyazawa
Kiichi, is any indication, this journey should not be too far to travel.
Moreover, once-confirmed pacifists such as Kan Naoto have already migrated
to a more central position.Although we cannot identify with certainty the
Japanese leaders with whom the new security consensus will be identified,
we can expect them to be conservative and to be committed democrats with
independent, full-throated voices on security issues. They will not lead
Japan too far toward great power status and abandonment nor allow it to
remain so dependent on the United States as to risk further entanglement.
They will abandon cheap-riding realism and consolidate the military gains
of the revisionists' tight embrace of the United States, but they will
not allow that embrace to drag Japan into undesirable territory. In short,
they will appreciate that the costs of remaining a U.S. ally-still Japan's
most attractive option-are escalating but will not allow them to become
too great to bear. Rather than expect Japan's continued migration from
the status quo as a junior partner or "poodle" toward greater symmetry
(including joint war fighting and "joint management of American hegemony"),
we should instead expect the new security discourse to resolve itself in
the form of a fuller maturation of Japan's dual hedge. (National Institute
for Defense Studies, 22 August 2005. "Joint management of U.S. hegemony”)

Washington understands
that Tokyo will work hard to reconcile its Asian diplomacy and economic
interests with its global diplomacy and military interests. It knows that
its friends in Japan's military establishment are doing rhetorical battle
with those in the economic establishment who are less convinced of the
value of the globalized alliance. Thus, recent agreements on alliance transformation
notwithstanding, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that either Japan
or the United States will continue to see an enhanced, militarized alliance
as its best choice. Having examined Japanese strategic options, then, it
is useful to glance at those of the United States as well. It is of vital
importance to the United States that China become a great power without
alarming Japan and its other neighbors. Not everyone appreciates this necessity,
however. Some in Washington believe that an alarmed Japan is an allied
Japan. They have used the yearnings of Japan's revisionists to divide East
Asia and to position Japan in balancing against China's rise. They warn
that China will try to drive a wedge between Japan and the United States.
(Aaron Friedberg, former deputy assistant for national security affairs
and director of policy planning in the Office of the Vice President, and
by Torkel Patterson, former senior director for Asian affairs at the National
Security Council, in their speeches to the American Enterprise Institute
conference "Transforming the U.S.-Japan Alliance," Tokyo, 25 October 2005.)

When Japan suggested
that China be included in the Proliferation Security Initiative, the U.s.
vetoed the idea. The Bush administration refused to intervene in the controversies
over Japanese historical revisionism or prime ministerial visits to the
Yasukuni Shrine, insisting that Beijing not be allowed to see any daylight
between Washington and Tokyo. Even as they assemble ad hoc coalitions of
the willing, U.S. officials insist that bilateral alliances must remain
the backbone of security in the region, and point to the success of the
2+2 realignment process and the bilateral embrace of common strategic interests
as evidence that Japan agrees. (Speech by John D. Hill, regional director
for Northeast Asia, at the Center for Global Partnership conference "Non-Traditional
Security," 19 July 2005, Tokyo.)

But many in
Japan do not. Some see this as divide and conquer, and urge the government
not to collude with a suboptimal strategy. A Sino-Japanese rapprochement
may be Washington's nightmare, they say, but it would be of incalculable
benefit to both sides, to the region as a whole, and even to the United
States. Many Americans also believe this. Some welcome stable Sino-Japanese
relations for their own sake, as a means toward the deep reconciliation
that has eluded the region since the Pacific War. Others, worried that
Sino-Japanese tensions could reverse the possibility of entrapment, urge
Tokyo and Beijing to reduce the temperature in their overheating relationship.
In this view, the United States needs to avoid getting entangled in Japan's
conflicts (Senkaku Islands, Yasukuni, textbooks) just as much as Japan
needs to avoid being entrapped in American ones. If Japan strays from a
pragmatic path, it risks losing the support of the United States. Indeed,
the United States may decide-independent of Japanese hedging and despite
its geostrategic attractions-that the formal alliance is too great a burden
for too limited a gain. Should it replace the alliance with a less constraining
alignment, Japan and other regional actors will have to increase their
level of self-help. (Washington Post, 7 September 2005.)

Such an outcome
would place Japan in dangerous new territory, requiring greater diplomatic
skills than it has displayed to date. But it seems far more likely that
Japan will choose to self-insure.When it does,
and even before it does, the construction of a new multilateral security
regime may prove to be the most effective option for the United States.
One template for this new architecture, would be to use the six-party talks
on the future of the Korean Peninsula as a springboard for a Northeast
Asia security talk shop that might mirror the Asian Regional Forum in Southeast
Asia. The advantages of multilateralism in the context of Chinese-Japanese
competition for leadership are manifold. First, it would provide a broader
and more stable infrastructure than the patron-client hierarchies that
characterize the current hubs and spokes. The possibilities for transparency-a
requirement for averting a debilitating regional security dilemma-would
be multiplied, albeit not guaranteed. Second, as in Europe, where multilateralism
has had a longer and more stable run, it would give Japan and the other
states in the region a larger stake in the construction of their own future,
a development that surely would enhance the standing of the United States
in the region as well. Third, it would reduce the considerable costs to
Washington of supplying the regional public good of security. Should Washington
elect to become the engaged, albeit distant, balancer on the European model,
it would be more likely to enjoy the benefits of regional economic prosperity
while avoiding excessive entanglement at a time when its power is in relative
decline.